


helpless, she lies across the stairs (haunting your days, consuming your prayers)

by Thegaygumballmachine



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, feel free to drop prompts in the reviews, hi this is my tumblr ficlet repost dump, more tags to come as I update, welcome hello have fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 15:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21448597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegaygumballmachine/pseuds/Thegaygumballmachine
Summary: Elizabeth McCord-centric ficlets. Cross posted from tumblr.Review or suffer my wrath (two corn chips in the cup holder of your car and a mixtape made solely of Mumford and sons songs).
Relationships: Elizabeth McCord/Henry McCord, Elizabeth McCord/Nadine Tolliver
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Elizabeth/Henry, post ep s4e22 Night Watch.  
tw for trauma. rated T for implied sexual content.

She goes home on shaky legs and thanks Allah first when everything is still standing. 

She rarely believes in any god —Christian, Muslim or otherwise— but today has changed her, torn something in her fabric that can’t knit back the same way. She’s seeing the kids in technicolor, and she’s desperately grateful for every step she watches them take, every bit of the vitriol Jason spews about the latest tyrannies of their government. 

It’s difficult to even drum up a response, but Henry has her. Henry always has her, even when his own world is falling apart, and the excuses from earlier still hold enough to get her upstairs and out of any restrictive clothing. He’s gentle with her, handling her like he did after Iran, like she’s made of glass or china and sits a word away from going to pieces. 

(He’s probably right about that, and she’s been crying for maybe five minutes but only notices now, when his thumb swipes across her cheek and he pulls her into his arms.

_ He has her _ , and it gets through to her slowly, like sand in an hourglass.)

“I love you,” he whispers. She can only cling to him, shaking all through her body, and he is warmth and strength and so, so solid, a presence she can’t deny. 

“Tell me we’re okay.”

“We’re okay.”

And that’s strong, too: deeply sincere and pained to the core, a near mirror of everything she feels, and she’s never loved him more than she does now. 

“We’re okay,” he says. “All of us. Me, the kids, Conrad, Russell, everyone. It’s over and we’re okay.”

She wants to kiss him: more than anything, she wants to card her hands into his hair and kiss him until neither of them can breathe, and the adrenaline high has her inhibitions on hold for the foreseeable future, so she does. They’re alive, and she feels it thrumming in her bones, the privilege of thought and action and a love like theirs. He feels incredible today, a miracle to the touch. 

She’s flying. 

Armageddon on hold and relief runs electric. She needs to feel him, follows the peaks and valleys of at least five different emotions before she can settle on one to sit in but knows through it all that she’s craving his touch. 

(They call it life affirming, she thinks, as she sets to work on his buttons. The most human connection, or something like that.)

“I’m gonna be selfish for the next ten minutes,” she says, “and then we’re gonna go be with our kids.”

He laughs, but she hears that reflection in it, knows he’s still with her. 

“Sounds good to me,” he says, and that, the easy way he knows her, comes somewhat close to perfect. 


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth/Nadine. Post-election night. Based on a prompt from lilacmermaid25 on tumblr except I didn’t follow the prompt at all. But it gave me the idea.
> 
> K+. No warnings except spoilers for an episode I haven’t even seen yet.

Elizabeth spends the first ten minutes after the election’s been called in a kind of emotional fog. Everyone’s cheering and they should be, she should be too, but it isn’t hitting her yet, not even when Blake toasts ‘Madam President-elect’ with a story about some miracle she pulled with China what seems like a lifetime ago. She’s smiling and nodding and saying her piece but there is a very large part of her that doesn’t feel it, doesn’t know if she will ever settle into the victory.

Henry sends her outside when he sees the look in her eye and she’s grateful for the space to breathe. The moon is full and ivy climbs the wall beside her, naturally vibrant in a way she’s out of touch with lately. She watches a ladybug spindling its way up the vine for maybe fifteen seconds, and then the moment shatters on a buzzing in her pocket.

_ Nadine Tolliver _calling.

It’s been so long since Nadine’s name has been on her screen she hardly knows what to do with it for awhile. She stares at the shapes, the roundness of the ‘d’ and the sharp lines of the ‘N’, comprehends them individually before she can take them together and actually answer the phone. There’s static and silence and the clink of a glass, and she stuffs her hand into her now-empty pocket, gathers the strength to say hello.

“Nadine,” she says, and it’s like coming home — warm and smooth on her tongue, the amber taste of a quality scotch. “Hi, um, how are you holding up these days?”

“I’m quite well, thank you.”

The crickets give them pause, and Elizabeth sits in the night, watches the stars twinkle at her and envelopes herself in that rich, strong voice. It’s familiar but new again, and it’s a feeling to cherish, a balm to her racing heart.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to hear your name on the news, Elizabeth,” says Nadine. There’s pride in that, in her sincere, quiet approval. “Congratulations.”

It rolls over her then. Slowly, a wave of gold, and she’s giggling into the phone, because she deserves it, goddamnit, she’s the _president_. Nadine Tolliver calling at 9:32 and she’s the president of the United States.

“We did it,” she breathes. Her hand goes to the railing ahead of her, knuckles white with unspent energy, and Nadine’s wry laughter filters down the line.

”No, ma’am. _You_ did it.”

And, from her, Elizabeth believes it.

  
  



	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry/Elizabeth Grace and Frankie AU (aka our spouses have been having an affair with each other for most of our marriages and now we have to live together but we hate* each other
> 
> *are extremely attracted to).
> 
> Rated K.

Her inheritance is a family home in Georgetown to share with Henry McCord. A spacious, sparsely decorated place. Despite the openness she feels closed in, cramped, wishes for endless sky and the comfort of the stables from the minute she gets in. She can’t understand why they won’t just move in together: it’s her place far more than it’s ever been Conrad’s, and he can barely even ride a horse, let alone love and care for them like she does. 

“I’ll get some coffee started,” says Henry, “and then we can talk.”

She doesn’t particularly want to. In all her dealings with Henry, he’s come off as a pompous, righteous know-it-all with little regard for anyone that doesn’t show up in his books. He’s the type to sit in the rain and read a newspaper when there’s perfectly good space inside, just because he doesn’t agree with the homeowner’s ideals. 

Physically, she can understand what Lydia saw in him — or rather, pretended to see. Otherwise he’s a mystery to her, muddy water through glass. 

Her bags go to the side of the hall and her coat across the back of a couch. She’s drained, more than, and the coffee does sound good, though she hates to admit it. 

“How do you take it?”

“Just straight, thanks.”

There isn’t much to do but wait so she traces a line in the popcorn on the ceiling and settles into the sofa cushions, doing all she can to relax before the inevitable. It’s one thing to end a marriage (albeit a twenty-five year marriage, one she was reasonably happy in, one she raised three children in) but quite another to be sent from her own home and forced to Washington, a festering miasma of everything she hates all wrapped up in one polluted, overpopulated package. 

Three glasses of wine before the plane and one in the air aren’t doing much for that train of thought. Coffee will help. 

“It’s decaf,” says Henry, “I hope that’s okay.”

All she can do is laugh, sharp in the air, and take it from him anyway. 

——

“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” she says. “I know you loved her.”

“I didn’t, really.”

There’s pain around his eyes as he says it, tension cording up his muscles, and she can see how much he wishes he did. That figures — the ethics professor, the religion scholar, the man who wouldn’t file for divorce because he’s Catholic and he can’t (something about his mother’s ghost coming back to kill him, she doesn’t know, she hasn’t cared before). 

“She hated my work,” he says. “Hated what I do and what I did before. Kept nagging me to find something more ‘important’. She loved me when I was a marine and then— you know, I think I need some scotch.”

“Do we have any?”

“If she ever lived here, you bet.”

It’s good, too. Old and sweet with a touch of a kick. He gets a little looser with it, stops actively verging on tears and starts to let himself move past it. She’s seeing him differently already: they have one hell of a connection in common, and the way he’s dealing with it is strangely human. 

“He kept telling me to sell my horses,” she mutters, once she’s finished one glass and started on a second. “Said they’d get enough for a new house if we played it right. Like he didn’t know how much I loved them.”

He’s watching her with a funny look in his eye, but it doesn’t get to her like it might sober. Everything’s softer now, and that’s what she wanted, that blurry, unfocused feel. It’s easier to think abstractly, and she knows now that this has been coming for a long time, longer than she could’ve predicted. 

“Good riddance,” she says, and raises her glass. “We’re too good for them.”

“Damn right.”

  
And so the evening goes.


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth/Henry, re: s6e09 and the infamous scrabble scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be longer but my motivation crapped out so here, have this. 
> 
> (There was, of course, a lilacmermaid prompt involved in the making of this idiocy. She is the savior of my muse.)

_ “Just play with me, will you, until I pass out?” _

“Yeah,” says Henry, “I can totally do that.”

There’s this devilish glint in his eye and in not five seconds flat he’s got her on her back, hand trailing deliciously up her thigh. Pointless patterns along her skin, gentle but strongly present, and she needs a beat to catch up and process what he’s done, but then she’s laughing, quietly, right in the back of her throat. 

“I meant Scrabble,” she murmurs, hooking her arms around his neck, “but that’s good too.”

In a gesture that shows exactly what he thinks of  _ that  _ idea, Henry kicks out and sends the board to the floor, tiles skittering across the carpet. By mutual understanding, they don’t talk about the cleanup he’ll need to do later — instead, he kisses her, deep and intense, and she sighs into his mouth. 

He always tastes better after a near global crisis. Like maple and sunlight, syrupy sweet and bright on her tongue. It’s a reward thing, she thinks, and she doesn’t much mind, not when he kisses so well that just this much is stealing her breath. 

“I’m better than Scrabble,” he says, into her neck and with overwhelming conviction. 

“So prove it.”

He glances up, and there it is again; that look, the one that says he’s going to deliver and then some, and she shivers, goes serious. 

“You got it,” he says, and he’s kissing down her body, working her shirt up and over her head. 


End file.
